ReliaBlog

Avoiding Bad Feedback in the Feedback 2.0 World, Part Two

It's Not Me, It's You: Scare off Potential Bad Eggs and Allay Buyer Concerns
Programs like ReliaBid and SquareTrade's seals can be very effective in nipping the problem of bad feedback in the bud. As you may have read on their web site, ReliaBid's member online auction sellers have experienced an average reduction in non-paying bidders and unpaid items of over 99%. And that's where bad feedback can originate, with these non-paying bidders and other "bad eggs," if the buyer leaves you retaliatory bad feedback after you leave them a negative.  So use services like ReliaBid to put an end to "bad eggs" before they can hurt you.  Prevention is the key.

Similarly, the SquareTrade seal inspires buyer trust and lets them know you're willing to work with them should something go wrong.

Turn the Other Cheek
If something does go wrong, hopefully the buyer emails you before he or she leaves a neg. Here's where you get your chance to make up for the problem and prevent bad feedback. And here's where I think sellers most squander that chance. They get caught up in an argument with the buyer; they disagree with the buyer about how flawed something is, how late it was, etc. Here's where it's hard to turn the other cheek, even if you think you're right. But doing so can be so worth it.

Offer some money off. If that doesn't work, consider offering a complete refund if you can afford it. Again, I'd rather offer a complete refund for an item (within reason) than have a negative sitting on my record for years. It surprises me that a seller would rather dicker over 20 bucks and get a potential negative than just suck it up and cough up a refund, and chalk it up to the cost of doing business. There is still that old saw, "The customer is always right." (I especially like that saw when I am a customer).

Make It Mutual
It was a great day when eBay instituted Mutual Feedback Withdrawal (MFW), I think. This process sometimes comes into play when one party jumps the gun and leaves a feedback before they contact the other and give him or her a chance to make it right. Or maybe both tempers flared, and later cooled. There are a few caveats, though: per eBay: "When feedback is withdrawn, the positive, negative, or neutral rating associated with that feedback comment will no longer show or count in your feedback score. However, the feedback comment itself will remain. It's still always a good idea to try and resolve trading issues before leaving a negative feedback, whenever possible." You also must wait to initiate the request for MFW "within 30 days of either person leaving feedback or within 90 days of the transaction end date, whichever is later." The url for MFW is here.

Erase Bad Feedback with SquareTrade
Another way to potentially nuke bad feedback is through the SquareTrade mediation service. I talk about this in my book, eBay Top 100 Simplified Tips & Tricks (insert shameless plug here). Go to their site at squaretrade.com for details. The current fees are $29.95 standard pricing or $19.95 for their "Expedited Resolution Service Subscribers." I've used SquareTrade myself and was totally happy with it.

However, there is anecdotal evidence that buyers might leverage negative feedback they've already left during the mediation process. Buyers know that the seller wants the negative removed, so they may essentially blackmail the seller out of money or goods to have the mark erased.  ReliaBid is a way for sellers to gain back some power by having a similar grip on the buyer's credit score.

Avoiding Bad Feedback in the Feedback 2.0 World, Part One

By Julia Wilkinson
Note: this is part 1 of a 3 part series by guest blogger Julia Wilkinson, author of The eBay Price Guide and eBay Top 100 Simplified Tips & Tricks.

Feedback is the cornerstone of the eBay trust system. Of all activities on the site, it inspires the most visceral and emotional reactions in buyers and sellers alike. I've seen many an eBay discussion board topic with a title like "Can you *believe* she just neg'd me?" The person then goes on to vent about the transaction for paragraphs.

As both a seller and buyer, I am extremely conscious of my feedback, as most eBayers are, and have in many cases bent over backwards to make it positive. I've also used some of the tools available to keep it that way, or to erase a negative, in the most extreme example.

But I do think when it comes to feedback, an ounce of prevention is worth a proverbial pound of cure. And with eBay's feedback system about to change to "Feedback 2.0" (more on that in a bit), I think it becomes all the more important for eBayers to understand how it works and the methods they have at their disposal to potentially solve feedback problems. Below are my suggestions for keeping it positive:

Avoid Buyer Surprises: Warts-and-All Descriptions
This is the most obvious suggestion, no doubt. And yet I think a lot of sellers, even experienced sellers (and yes, I'll admit, even myself), have been guilty of whitewashing our descriptions. Sometimes just a teensy bit.

You may have a great item, but if it has even a small flaw -- it seems minimal to you -- buyers may not be so willing to overlook it.

So look at your items with a critical eye, and, though it may be difficult, be totally open in any problems they have. That does not mean you should downplay the positives…definitely lead with how great the thing is. This pink sweater is a well-known European boutique brand name, made of 100% cotton, for example. And it has no tears, and has only been worn a few times, but it does have some slight pilling. Provide close-up photos of the flaw if possible so buyers can judge for themselves how bad (or not) it is. (The sweater example is one that really happened to me, and I was surprised that the buyer was so disappointed, but I offered her a complete refund, and the feedback for the transaction wound up being fine. I'd rather be out some money than have a long-term stain on my record scaring off other, potentially more lucrative, sales. And I avoid pilling like the plague now).

If you discover the flaw after you list the item, you can revise the description. If it's after it gets a bid, you can add to the description. Or, if you get a question, you can use the answer the member question feature to respond and disclose the flaw so all potential bidders can see the response. Finally, if it's after the auction closes, you can email the bidder and make sure they're aware of it, and you may offer to pay for shipping, or other concessions to make up for it.

$3500 Raised for EFF, Big Value in Consultative Advice

Last week the auction which Scott Beale, of LaughingSquid, placed online to raise funds for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) closed on eBay. The auction raised over $3500 for the EFF. I was really excited to see the money raised, as well as to see that the auction ended with a legitimate bidder. I spent a lot of time on the phone working with Scott to get this item sold and to make sure that we avoided fraud and ended up with a winning bidder. I'm glad it worked out.

I hope we get to work on other charity projects in the future. I've been working so hard on building ReliaBid, I haven't had the chance to do much charity work or community service lately, and this reminded me that I like and miss doing so. As I said, I hope ReliaBid has the opportunity to work with more charity eBay auctions in the future, to help them avoid online auction fraud.

The opportunity Scott gave me to work with him on this also brought to mind just how valuable the ReliaBid Distinguished Clients Program (DCP) is. For sellers that do a high volume of sales ReliaBid's DCP offers not only discounted fees, but also access to an individualized account manager that will help the eBay PowerSellers with advising & strategy.

This is the sort of service I provided to Scott, working through different problems and creating adaptive strategies to deal with them. We have an entire team at ReliaBid that does only that for eBay PowerSellers as part of our service offering.  While to be a PowerSeller you have to be somewhat savvy on eBay, ReliaBid still has a collection of industry best practices and an intimate knowledge of how to best fight fraud and can use all of these tools to help our clients succeed. I feel like this is an often overlooked part of our service, but with Scott's auction, it was actually the most valuable thing we provided.

Charity auctions interested in receiving ReliaBid's protection please feel free to email us.

Taking a Look at Recent Fee Hikes

Fee increases will go into effect on eBay.com and eBayMotors.com at the end of this month for both fixed price and core-auction style listings.  The following fee changes will occur on January 30, 2007:

    >  Insertion Fees for $1.00-$9.99 will increase from .35 to .40 cents

    >  Final Value Fees on goods sold between $25.01 to $1,000 will increase from 3% to 3.25%

    >  Transaction Services Fee for Motorcycles, Powersports, Cars & Trucks and all Other Vehicles &     Trailers will increase by $10.

    >  Motors Reserve Fee is changing from a flat rate to a percentage (.1%) of the reserve price,         however, there will be a $5 minimum upheld, with the maximum percentage not exceeding $10.

While eBay executive Bill Cobb has labeled these increases to be "modest", for an eBay Motors seller they are anything but modest.  A $10 increase in listing fees for a seller who may have previously spent $50 on listing fees on average means that same seller will now be spending $60 per listing, a 20 percent increase in costs.  A 20 percent increase in costs is anything but modest and goes to show how out of touch eBay is with their members.  So why is eBay trying to put a rosy spin on what can only be considered a significant hike?

Since peaking in mid-2003, eBay's stock has been fighting a wild battle to maintain their original high rates of growth.  With stock prices once again sagging, executives need to again find a fix to show that their profitability is continuing to climb.  Fee increases are a short-term solution to raise profit potential and appeal to stockholders and investors who want to once again see the rising numbers they were previously accustomed to viewing.  However, in pandering to the crowd and attempting to receive the instant gratification of not being downgraded again, eBay executives are setting themselves and investors up for further problems down the line. 

ReliaBid CEO, Jon Rosen feels that eBay is "missing the big picture" by simply increasing fees without addressing the underlying issues that plague the marketplace.  In order to create sustainable growth, eBay should be spending their time focusing on ways to increase customer retention, while not forgetting about the importance of sellers on the platform.  One of the reoccurring complaints from both buyers and sellers is that eBay lacks satisfactory customer service.  Sellers who have had bad experiences receiving direct support from eBay are also beginning to look to other channel opportunities to sell their goods.

What has made eBay so strong in the past is their large and reliable customer base, however, if they do not begin to craft strategies to retain these customers, they will lose begin to lose their corner on the market to a platform that will provide support.  And as we all know, where the customers go, the sellers are soon to follow.

Shill Bidding on eBay

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) have been developing a software solution designed to recognize fraud in online auctions. Specifically, it will analyze bidding patterns to look for shill bidding. What will the impact of this new software being developed by researchers at CMU be on eBay?

If released to the public, members of the eBay community could potentially see if sellers are driving the bid price up with shill bids. Shill bids are bids that the seller enters, or that are entered on the seller's behalf, in order to drive up the final bid price. When shill bidding is successful, the shill bids are overbid by a legitimate buyer. Shill bidding schemes have become increasing complex on eBay, with sellers using multiple accounts to enter shill bids on their items to increase their profits. A practice unfair to buyers, shill bidding, can be hard to spot, but now this software may make it easier for buyers to steer clear (and report) auctions from sellers that are involved in shill bidding and fraud.

Of course, the greatest utility of this software would occur if eBay were to adopt it and implement it on the enterprise level, weeding out shill bidders and sellers that fraudulently inflate their final values. However, it is because eBay takes a percent of the final value of an item that it seems unlikely that it would be in eBay's favor to adopt this solution. Should the software prove successful in reducing shill bidding, it would ultimately drive down the final values for many transactions, and subsequently reduce eBay's profit on those transactions.

Another potential issue with adoption of an anti-bid-fraud solution is eBay's existing difficulty providing quality customer service. While one would hope that should an anti-fraud solution be implemented, it would be one that works, nothing is 100% and it should be expected that there will be some mistakes.  With numerous complaints already from people within the community who feel eBay's Customer Service is a bit lacking, what will this added influx of reported individuals, some of whom may be legitimate sellers, do to an already taxed communication system?  It would not seem implausible that innocents would be caught in such a dragnet.

It is reassuring to know that there are developers out there who are looking into a solution for this problem.  But, like most other security solutions, it will need to be adopted at the enterprise level to be truly effective.